Planning A High School Education

I find myself facing the prospect of homeschooling a high school student.  Panic does certainly raise it's ugly head at times.  But panic like this is simply fear of change and the unknown.  Fear is relieved when a plan is in place.  When I think of my son and his learning style, I know that he will do better homeschooling where he can learn the way he learns best.  AH wants to attend college, so together we will be planning a college prep education that will take place not only here at home, but will also take advantage of the many opportunities available to us around the area.  This summer we will begin planning the first year of high school using the book, College Without High School by Blake Boles.

This book is full of real-life student stories and exercises to take general interests and make them into specific goals.  It is full of suggestions for cobbling together experiences and study such as auditing a college course, volunteering,   reading,   researching, interning, etc into a "course" worth high school credit . It is written directly to the teen reader, but I found it very helpful in my own life.  

The author, Blake Boles, has an interesting story and has built a wonderful education and life using these techniques.  You may recognize his name since he runs a well respected business, Unschool Adventures.

So this is our summer work.  We'll be taking it chapter by chapter until we come up with a plan.  Change is frightening.  But planning for that change is exciting and empowering!

Frozen Dreaming

January in Minnesota can be beautiful and bitterly cold and dangerous at the same time. I do love living here even though I have been known to complain about the weather (Minnesotans are notorious for complaining about the weather All. The. Time.) Before we have our famous January thaw, one of my ways of coping with the bitter cold is to brew a hot cup of dark roast and open up my seed catalogs. I am instantly transported to warmer days. It is heavenly reading. I take notes, draw up diagrams of the garden, research plants. Does any real garden come close the the frozen dreams in January? So many goals, hopes, dreams, and plans. I'm an idea person so I love to let my imagination fly. The gardens of my dreams are lush, beautiful and practical, and there are never any bugs! Though my real garden never quite measures up to the garden in my head, I do believe it benefits from these moments in the middle of January when all is possible.

Shhh...This is Top Secret!

Poor AH. He was asked last night what we were going to be studying starting next week and he really couldn't answer. The reason? It's a secret! I wanted to start our year with a bang: something fun, hands-on, mysterious and out of the ordinary. Okay, so a Not Back to School Week is not out of the ordinary for homeschoolers, especially this time of year. But fun, hands-on and mysterious it is. I would also say that it is out of the ordinary compared to our "normal" schedule. We usually don't do this many hands-on activities on a daily basis. But it will hopefully kick start AH's 6th grade year.

First of all, I thought it would be fun to design a t-shirt for AH to kick off our week. You have all probably seen a version of this shirt at stores: Why Do They Call It Homeschooling if We're Never Home? Underneath this heading I personalized it with all the places we have gone in our 2 years of homeschooling. I'll post a picture later.

Each day that will include some fun hands on activities. Tuesday starts out with a brief study of lenses and light culminating in a reveal of the microscope I bought earlier this summer! I thought that the rest of the day could be devoted to exploring the slide sets I bought along with some experiments which use the microscope. We'll have a lunch of miniatures: mini veggie burgers and baby carrots with mini cupcakes for dessert.

Wednesday is the day I watch AH's very young cousins. I decided to incorporate them into the week and art day is something we can all do together. I've got some new art supplies and activities to try out for that day. I thought we could decorate cookies for both an art activity and snack time!

Thursday is the day I have set aside for planning and executing a "Redwall Feast." AH is a big fan of Brian Jacques' Redwall series. The characters are just as likely to be baking and cooking as defending their beloved Abbey from vermin hordes. So today we will study weapons from the Medieval period while planning, preparing and serving dinner using some recipes from The Redwall Cookbook.

History is AH's favorite subject. We have zoomed through the first and second volumes of Story of the World and still AH cannot get enough! We are starting a living math curriculum this year and as a fun start I thought that after our dinner from Redwall Abbey, we could sit down as a family and watch the PBS show, The Story of 1.

Friday is usually the day I will schedule field trips, so we will be traveling to Interstate Park at Taylor's Falls next week. It is a wonderful park filled with potholes drilled by the water of retreating glaciers, rocks to climb, a river and abounding plant and wildlife to sketch. We'll bring our field guides and sketch books (and camera!) for a morning of discovery. I'm looking backgound materials on the pot holes and Minnesota geology. On the way and back we'll listen to The Legend of Luke, the next book in the Redwall series.

This is my rough plan and I need to fill in more activities and details, but I'm so excited I had to tell someone!

**update...9/9/09 we dropped the Redwall feast tonight due to not getting the cookbook from our library. We'll probably do that in the next two weeks. So Thursday is now Castle Day. We are studying castles, watching a video about castles and making a castle! Check out my blog later this week to see how it turns out!